Susan Rice, in her first public comments on claims she sought to ‘unmask’ the names of Trump associates caught up in surveillance, acknowledged Tuesday that she asked for the identities of U.S. citizens in intelligence reports – but defended the requests as routine and denied leaking any Trump-related information.

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"I leaked nothing to nobody, and never have," the former Obama national security adviser told MSNBC.

She said she never sought to unmask the names of Trump associates in intelligence reports "for any political purposes" or spying purposes.

"This is not anything political as has been alleged," Rice said. "The allegation is that somehow Obama administration officials utilized intelligence for political purposes. That is absolutely false."

"I leaked nothing to nobody, and never have."

- Susan Rice

Rather, Rice said she sometimes sought the names of people in intelligence reports, as part of her job.

"The intelligence community made the determination whether the identity of that American individual could be provided to me," Rice said.

The Tuesday interview with MSNBC occurred after sources told Fox News that Rice had sought to unmask the names of Trump team members caught up in incidental surveillance of foreign targets. Those names were then widely disseminated.

Rice on Tuesday flatly denied leaking the identity of President Trump's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, and also batted down Trump's claim in early March that the Obama administration had "wiretapped" Trump Tower.

Rice spoke in generalities about the unmasking process, emphasizing that intelligence reports were first brought to her and that she did not "solicit reports."

"I receive those reports, as did each of those other officials, and there were occasions when I would receive a report when a U.S. person was referred to. Name not provided, just U.S. person," Rice said. "And sometimes in that context, in order to understand the importance of the report and understand its significance, it was necessary to find out who that U.S. person was."

Many of Rice's defenders contend that unmasking was a normal and routine task for a national security adviser, but others who have been directly involved in intelligence collection say that's not the case.

"From my direct experience dealing at this level, that is never done," retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer told Fox News. "The national security adviser is a manager position, not an analyst position. You have analysts in the intelligence community whose job is to sort through who is doing what with what. Susan Rice is a senior manager looking over the entire intelligence community. She should not have time to be unmasking individuals having conversations.”

After the Rice interview, Trump's director of social media, Dan Scavino, tweeted from his personal account that "Lyin', leakin' Susan Rice stammered through her soft ball interview with Dem PR person Andrea Mitchell."

As some GOP lawmakers now call on Rice to testify, he added: "Rice won't agree to testify because she won't get away with lying to Congress like she did with Benghazi?"

Rice on Tuesday also said unmasked intelligence reports were not passed around.

"That would come back only to the person who requested it, and it would be brought back to them directly," Rice said.

She never explicitly stated Trump associates were unmasked in the reports, saying to talk about specifics would be to reveal "classified information." Rice did, however, allow that it was "possible" some Trump associates could have been caught up in incidental collection.

She drew a strong distinction between those who had been leaking details from the reports to newspapers -- leaks that largely benefited the outgoing Obama administration or wounded the incoming Trump administration -- and her actions.

"There's no equivalence between so-called 'unmasking' and leaking," Rice said.

While Rice spoke, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff released a statement explaining incidental collection and echoing Rice's words that unmasking is typically done to understand context and value of intelligence.

Trump’s Russia denials just fell apart as after months of denying that they knew Mike Flynn had Russia connections, White House officials admitted that they knew Flynn “had problems” which is why Steve Bannon was on the NSC.

Rosie Gray of The Atlantic tweeted:

The White House claimed that Flynn was let go because he lied to Vice President Pence, but it turns out that this wasn’t true. Bannon was named to the National Security Council on January 29, so the Trump administration knew about Flynn, and they were worried enough to send Steve Bannon in to keep an eye on him.

The Trump administration’s Russia denial continue to be contradicted by facts. What is clear is that the White House is going to try to change the subject from their potential collusion with Russia during the presidential campaign to Susan Rice. If the Susan Rice distraction doesn’t stick, they are going to throw Mike Flynn under the bus.

Trump hasn’t been telling the truth about Russia, and the removal of Steve Bannon is another crack in the administration’s wall of denial.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Before signing up with Donald Trump, former campaign manager Paul Manafort secretly worked for a Russian billionaire with a plan to "greatly benefit the Putin Government," The Associated Press has learned. The White House attempted to brush the report aside Wednesday, but it quickly raised fresh alarms in Congress about Russian links to Trump associates.

Manafort proposed in a confidential strategy plan as early as June 2005 that he would influence politics, business dealings and news coverage inside the United States, Europe and former Soviet republics to benefit President Vladimir Putin's government, even as U.S.-Russia relations under Republican President George W. Bush grew worse.

The United Arab Emirates arranged a secret meeting in January between Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a Russian close to President Vladi­mir Putin as part of an apparent effort to establish a back-channel line of communication between Moscow and President-elect Donald Trump, according to U.S., European and Arab officials.

The meeting took place around Jan. 11 — nine days before Trump’s inauguration — in the Seychelles islands in the Indian Ocean, officials said. Though the full agenda remains unclear, the UAE agreed to broker the meeting in part to explore whether Russia could be persuaded to curtail its relationship with Iran, including in Syria, a Trump administration objective that would be likely to require major concessions to Moscow on U.S. sanctions.

(CNN)The top Democrat on the House Russia investigation, Rep. Adam Schiff, said Wednesday President Donald Trump personally promised documents at the center of "unmasking" allegations would be made available to all members of the House intelligence committee, but that White House staff is fighting those documents' release.

"The President, when I met with him, said that he is happy to have whoever we wanted review the documents. His staff has opposed that, they were opposed to even letting my own staff review the documents, my staff director," Schiff told CNN Wednesday. "So we're still trying to get those documents for the full committee, we would like the White House's help if they are sincere about wanting to share this information and have the oversight functions performed, they are to be facilitating this."

He added, "But as yet we have not been able to make those documents available to the full committee."

CNN has reached out to the White House for comment on Schiff's characterization, and have not yet received a response.

She is not telling the truth; for one thing, she already lied about even knowing about the unmasking. Secondly, the information was made available amongst several agencies by a rule change with the names unmasked and thirdly, she has a history of lying.

Speaking to MSNBC on Tuesday, Barack Obama’s former national security adviser did not deny unmasking the identities of the names of Donald Trump associates collected in foreign surveillance.

She implicitly acknowledged and explicitly defended unmasking (the revealing of names within the intelligence community of U.S. citizens gathered in foreign surveillance) by claiming:
“It was not uncommon. It was necessary at times to make those requests.”

@twentysixteen@goatherderson
We have not seen nor heard of even one piece of evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. If there were anything, it would have been leaked long before now since the "unmasked" names and info were spread amongst many agencies - in order to assure leaks, I presume.

@twentysixteen
No incriminating information has been released as yet and likely won't be any. The Russian probe will have to do with the DNC hacking but that didn't lose the election for Hillary. She was just a very bad, untrustworthy, and unlikeable candidate and Trump's and the House and Senate wins were simply a total repudiation of Obama's lack of leadership and poor policies the past 8 years.